I'm not sure. That's not the behavior I saw in Chrome when I was experimenting.

In the example on MDN:

    onclick="modifyText();"

That is setting the onclick *attribute* to the *string* "modifyText()". Not to the function modifyText.

That would be equivalent to the following:

    foo.setAttribute("onclick", "modifyText()");

But that doesn't apply to TimedItems as they are not Nodes.